offerings from Aria Nadii & C.P. McDill's vast collection of old book page ephemera + various collaborations with each other and those dearly departed anonymous souls whose paper ghosts we have rescued from obscurity.

What is a paper in the retort?

In alchemy the retort is both symbolically and literally the vessel in which a purifying fire distills matter into essence. Although it does not consume the source material, a scanner (or possibly a camera) does distill a sort of essence from the object it pictures. Digitizing a piece of paper gives it an incorruptible, ethereal and nearly universal diffusion, indeed a transmutation that even the ancient alchemists couldn't have imagined. Thus do these old pages and pictures pass from obscurity and decay (putrefactio) into a disembodied spectre (spiritus) which can be encountered anywhere in time and space (the internet). Enjoy!

Search This Blog

"Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is." - Jean Dubuffet

Blog Archive

Subscribe To

This photoblog pools the found art, ephemera, and collages of Aria Nadii and C.P. McDill, a pair of visual and sound artists who toil creatively in a tiny seaside cottage. Everything posted here is a construction or remnant of old paper either made by us or found by us.

Pictures are scanned from original source material in our collection, mostly rare and out of print old books, vintage journals, scrapbooks, doodles on book pages or inside covers etc. We share them here for the reason that they would otherwise never be seen.